we learned this lesson already. [The Counter Hit #8]

Hey, here's a question for you.

What does it mean to be sustainable?

(Blows) All that and more

here on the Counter Hit.

(Imitates Counter Hit)

Insert music...

Counter hit...

Counter hit...

Counter hit...

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Heavy...

Awesome...

Music...

It's blowing you away

how cool the music is.

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Do

you like that?

Do you like that music right there?

The music we made custom made for you?

(Laughs)

We don't have any audio for this week's

episode, and there's a

very good reason for it.

(Clears Throat)

We'll get to that in just a second.

First, this is your first time tuning

into the Counter Hit.

My name's Sam Kirk, also known as

Scarequotes, in some online circles.

And hey, this is your

first time on the internet.

If it is, welcome.

Come stay a while.

Get a little cozy, you know?

Get comfy, you know?

Pull a chair up.

Honestly, I would have

preferred it, you know.

You probably should have gone like

Webcrawler for your first foray into the

internet, but if this is your first time

here, we welcome you aboard.

This is a show where we explore the

things that we love and what that says

about the human condition.

We waste a little bit of time before the

proverbial end and enjoy

ourselves along the way.

Welcome aboard, my friends.

As I was saying, yeah, we don't have

music for our

transitions or anything today.

There's a good reason for that.

(Clears Throat)

We stream our podcast everywhere,

everywhere, and certain platforms that we

stream our podcast to or

broadcast our podcast to.

I don't want to name any names, but

it might be--

it might rhyme with the word

"blueboob.com."

Not an actual website, but man, that

would be a pretty cool website if it was.

Yeah, blueboob.com likes to flag our

music and has recently flagged our latest

couple of episodes for monetization for

the music that we use.

Here's why that's really interesting.

We use only public domain music for our

broadcasts or music that we have

purposefully licensed, one or the other.

And the music we used in the last couple

of episodes is

specifically public domain.

We got it through public domain channels.

We have the license for

it and everything else.

It doesn't

matter.

Doesn't matter.

Blueboob.com--

well, not blueboob.com.

Some company that I won't name who it is

is acting on behalf of these creatives,

which leads me to believe that they're

not really acting on behalf.

They just found this music and decided to

take ownership of them as flagging

anything with those tracks used.

And, you know, we could fight that, and

maybe we will, but we have another

solution coming into the foray in terms

of our audio in future episodes.

The solution for that is not something

I'm able to use right now.

But we can

keep the show going.

So if you like the

music of just my voice,

well, you're in the right place.

Welcome.

So what's our topic for the day?

Well,

talking about sustainability.

And the first thing that comes to mind is

this article that just dropped today,

September 15th, the time of this airing,

from gamedeveloper.com.

The article is written by Diego Arguello.

What a cool name.

This is from a game developer.

The War Dogs Lead says, "The studio won't

hire people who should

cry crunch on social media."

That's a mouthful.

But if you're tuning in for the first

time and don't know what crunch is,

crunch is the practice of, usually in

software development, but not always,

racing to the finish line at almost any

cost to meet an

arbitrary release or deadline.

So for instance, people working long

hours, sometimes not even sleeping,

literally sleeping at the office and

waking up and doing more programming just

to make the deadline to

release the piece of software.

And of course, we're

talking about video games.

So that's what we're talking about here.

Again, the headline, War Dog Lead says,

"The studio won't hire people who decry

crunch on social media."

Meaning anyone that's on social media

that says, "Hey, I'm anti-crunch.

We should work

through sustainable means."

Yeah, this studio

isn't going to hire you.

The quote, the sub-quote here is, "If you

care about the work you're making and the

result of what you make

here, you'll feel really valued.

If you don't, you

will feel slave-driven."

Wow, that's so confidence boosting here.

Let's see, what does this article say?

So again, this is

coming from Diego Arguello.

Joe Brammer, CEO of War Dogs Maker

Bulkhead, says that people who may have

an issue with crunch, "often don't make

it in the door," at his company.

No period there.

"An interview with The Game Business

after discussing how the game a

total of two..."

Mmm,

mmm.

"How the game a total of..."

Diego, come on, man.

Come on.

Come on.

We can do better.

The game sold a total of two million

copies in five days since launching in

early access on September 10th.

Brammer became forthright about the fact

that developers at the studio are subject

to working overtime.

He says he wants the studio to be known

as a place of hard work.

Ooh.

Wow.

Quote, "A lot of people who may have an

issue with crunch, rightly so.

I understand that issue.

We always try and avoid it."

Hmm.

"But we don't hide that this is going to

happen at some point.

They often don't make

it in the door," he says.

"We want it to be known for that.

We want to be known for that.

This is a place you come to work hard.

If you care about the work you're making,

the result of what you make

here, you'll feel really valued.

If you don't, you

will feel slave-driven."

What?

You will feel valued?

If you care about the work

you're doing, you'll feel valued.

I have questions.

Let's keep going.

Brammer says the studio checks people's

social media accounts during hiring

processes, and those who are vocal about

not advocating for crunch

are rarely the right candidate.

Okay.

Okay.

Hold on.

Due to diligence, all that stuff,

it is often not a good practice to look

at social media accounts, what people

post, and use that as a framework for

dismissing candidates in

the interviewing process.

Just saying that will get

you into a lot of trouble.

So the fact that he's

publicly admitting that is...

Oof.

That's spicy.

All right.

"We check people's socials, and if you're

constantly tweeting anti-crunch

messaging, such as, this should never be

a thing, we know that and go, look,

you're not going to be happy here, so

we're not going to go with you.

He tells the game business."

Okay.

I mean, fair.

The way he frames it is fair.

Still, though, still, if the candidate is

qualified and you have a need for that

person's skill, it might be worth it.

Who knows?

This reporter then goes on to kind of

summarize what crunch is for people.

I just kind of explained it.

Again, video games are...

I've been subject to crunch for as long

as video games have been around.

Arbitrary deadline, we have to meet the

release date of something.

So let's go ahead and literally put our

workers, grind them to pulp, meet the

quotas, get the QA testing done, whatever

is required necessarily to be done.

Get the QA testing done, whatever is required necessary to

get the game to ship.

This is a very common thing.

And a couple of years ago, it's been

pretty popular to kind of hate this kind

of practice, kind of be like, "Hey, is

there a way to not crunch?"

And some game developers say, "Yes."

And some game developers, "Not so much."

It quotes here, "Bolotro developer, Local

Funk, delayed the titles 1.1 update to

return to their hobbyist roots after

experiencing burnout, working in crunch

mode around launch, which

involved 12 hour workdays.

In July, multiple rockstar developers

accused the company of actively striving

to facilitate crunch in the United

Kingdom, working on Grand Theft Auto 6."

Now, here's the interesting part that I

thought was fascinating about

this little snippet article.

"For the people working on War Dogs,

Brammer says the quote upside, end quote,

to its war culture is a financial reward,

referring to an undisclosed number of

people at the studio who own

shares and receive bonuses."

Okay, so you're commission based.

That's what you're saying.

It's a commission based system.

"The game business reports that not

everyone within Bulkit has

access to these benefits."

Oh,

lovely.

Not everyone has access.

Probably only a select few.

Only the actual shareholders themselves

are internal stakeholders.

But those that do get

a meaningful amount.

If you're going to be a company who says

we do crunch, then we have to also say,

but you get something

for it, Brammer says.

We want people to know that these people

who do work hard get that

return and it's life changing.

Okay, hold on.

Hold on.

The people that work hard

get this amount of money.

We just said that not everyone within

bulk has access to these benefits, but

the people that are working hard get it.

So that's everyone then.

I think there's a loophole here.

There's a flaw.

There's a flaw here.

"Brammer expresses excitement over the

prospect of juniors who have been in the

studio for two or three years who are

going to get money to buy a house or at

least a down payment."

Yeah, in this economy.

"At the same time, Bulkit has made

redundancies every year for the past six

years, laying off

about 20% of the company."

Oh, yay.

That's a tough story.

"Following the studio's newfound success,

Brammer jokes about having to coach said

developers into not spending all their

money on takeaway and energy drinks."

Takeaway is the European

way of saying carry out.

Takeout.

The last quote being, "We have a new

responsibility to our younger staff for

making good money, often money they

haven't seen before."

End quote, he says.

Okay.

Again, I hope everyone's getting access

to these shares of all this

money that they're getting.

That's wild.

So what do I think as a leadership

consultant of the idea of

this developer

basically gaining people away who are

anti-crunch that might want to work for

the company otherwise?

I mean,

here's the thing.

I mean, at the very least, he's being

honest about what his company will do and

what they will have

to do to be successful.

And being upfront about that for people

that are applying for the job is

honorable, just letting people know what

they're expected to get into it.

Not shying away from it,

not lying, not saying, not us.

Yeah.

Okay.

There's there's honor in that for sure.

The logic here is insane.

Absolutely insane.

Any company that I've worked with that is

focused completely

driven completely by money.

Mm hmm.

Can only do so for so long.

The people there are people that are

going to be working for

your company, any company.

This is example of game developer who

don't care about the money.

They just care about

making the best thing they can.

The money is just kind of a who cares.

Give me enough money.

So that way I have a

roof over my head and

with the argument being that you're going

to make so much money that it's worth it.

There are countless stories of game

developers who did crunch and

sure, they made lots of money.

They also suffered significant health

issues that are in

some cases irreparable.

You can't go back on those.

They're still dealing

with those health issues.

I recall the game developer to retro city

rampage after he made a bajillion

different ports of his game.

He had to stop at some point because his

health was just declining that rapidly.

So to argue that it's

worth it for the money.

I don't know.

I don't know.

There's other details in this article

here from the game business, which is

where the source of the data comes from.

There's some interesting by lines here,

like we're not transparent.

We're not honest is the end quote.

Huh?

In quote being we're not transparent.

We're and we're not honest.

We're being clear.

What right now it's in our interest to be

transparent about some things, but we're

not telling everyone

everything we're doing.

The brand is becoming that we believe

we're transparent on us.

That's creating a new problem.

And that if we choose not to be

transparent or honest about something

therefore we're moving away from the

thing that people believe we are.

We've always been the same.

My LinkedIn is famously divisive.

There was something from the company that we're in.

There was something from Satya Nadella

where he said people should

know what a leader stands for.

People know what I believe.

They know I don't believe in work from

home for making video games.

They don't expect people to crunch.

I own that.

I don't try and hide it.

Hmm.

I'm very, I have no

nothing about this game.

I know nothing about this developer.

So I suppose I shouldn't judge the person

or what I know about

this person's ideology.

But yeah, the source of the article

basically saying that, you know, crunch

is just a thing and that you're

incentivized to crunch

for the financial gain.

That's a scary thing.

That's a scary thing.

I.

The ends justifying the means is a very

scary slippery slope to dive into.

That is not something that I would.

I'd be comfortable

diving into for anyone.

I would not recommend

that path for anyone.

And the people that I consult, I don't

recommend that for them.

You're why you should be stronger than

just the financial gain.

That being said, some people, it truly is

all about the money.

And I say to you that if you

care so much about the money,

why video game development?

There are other industries that exist

that are specific to money.

Like banking.

Have you heard of banking?

Thought about getting

into the financial sector.

That way, everyone's talking money and

everyone cares about money.

And that's what matters.

Because what happens is, is

people can get a whiff that you're

playing a video game or enjoying a piece

of quote unquote art or a product.

And you can tell that the people making

it are doing it for a profit.

Like, and that's the number

one thing they care about.

They can tell they can sniff it out.

And that'll that'll

rob you of overall sales.

It will.

So I don't know.

In some in some ways,

this is not my race.

It's not my horse race, whatever.

But it's just another example of.

I mean, it's a little bit of an

inflammatory headline and the person

Diego pulled it from a larger interview

that I should have

read watched on my own.

That's on me.

My fault.

Another example of game developers doing

what they're getting rewarded for, which

is if they get monetary reward for doing

unsavory behavior,

they're going to keep doing it.

That's how the system works.

So.

Let

me know in the comments

if you've played War Dogs.

I have not.

I doubt I will.

I'm being honest.

It seems like it's doing

really well financially.

Interesting.

Oh, and it's an early access to very.

Interesting.

So it's not even a complete game.

There's a lot of games that do well in

early access than just kind of Peter

after the game comes out.

Wasn't pub G in early

access for like forever.

And then some games do well in early

access and then do even

better once the game's fully out.

I think like Hades is a

great example of that.

So I don't know.

Let me know in the comments whether you

think this game is good.

I don't know.

So.

With that.

Transition time now to.

Have you heard of Alex Falcone?

Alex Falcone.

He's kind of dominating a lot of people's

algorithms right now.

He's all over Instagram

and TikTok and so forth.

He is a comedian slash

scam hunter per his bio.

And if you haven't heard.

Of Alex Falcone.

I'm going to recommend that you do.

And by proxy, I'm going to play one of

his videos and we're going to watch it,

listen to it together so you can get an

idea of what he's all about.

What his vibe is all about.

Folks.

Zero dot.

Zero dot media.

The counter hit.

We love it when someone's fighting the

good fight and Alex Falcone is fighting a

good fight by disproving myths.

Showing off scams.

Providing unlearnings for people, etc.

And his latest one,

most tech demos are fake.

Let's see what this one's all about.

Recently, the fraud electric truck

company named after Nikola Tesla went

bankrupt and settled lawsuits with

investors over having faked all of its

technology, but not the one that you're

thinking of the other one and they did

one of the funniest

fake demos of all time.

So they're trying to build a truck and

failing, it doesn't move.

So what they do is they drag it up to the

top of a hill and then put it in neutral

and let it roll down.

And that is fraud.

I mean, it's hilarious, but it's fraud.

But it does make me wonder about other

companies that have done fake demos for

years, like a demo of full self-driving

in 2016 that later

turns out to have been fake.

Or the much more recent demo

of fully autonomous robots.

The tech industry has a complicated

relationship with fake demos.

Steve Jobs famously faked his first demo

by bringing in a computer that they

weren't actually selling to do the thing

that he was claiming

the other one could do.

And he kept bending the

truth through his iPhone demos.

The main difference is they eventually

did do the thing, so it's fake it till

you make it, or in the case that you

don't make it, you get in trouble and or

there are no consequences at all.

There is one surefire way to tell that a

demo is real and that's if it goes bad.

Like Honda's robot falling down the

stairs or Bill Gates causing a blue

screen of death live.

Or somebody else breaking windows.

Basically tech demos

are like movie trailers.

They're not showing you the movie that

they've made because they

haven't made a movie yet.

They're showing you the

movie they might eventually make.

And if it's good, you

should be suspicious.

And if it looks bad, it's almost

certainly telling the truth.

that's kind of an example of what

this individual does

for the greater good.

For good people all around.

I'm a big fan of his

channel, his stuff, Alex Falcone.

Fun fact about him.

wasn't initially trying to be a

purveyor of scams and so forth.

It was just a way for him to kind of

create content to get

people to watch his comedy shows.

And it's kind of blowing up ever since.

Not that he needs the promotion from us,

but over at Counterhead, we love it when

individuals are willing and able to fight

the good fight when it comes to

misinformation and all of that other good

stuff.

week, OpenAI got caught repeatedly lying

with graphs in their presentation about

how their product was going to lie less.

So now seems like a good time for a media

literacy lesson in how to

spot lying with bar graphs.

Number one, always check the Y axis, the

up and down part and look at the labels

and see if it goes to zero.

Like 123 to 177 is a decent sized jump,

but if you only make the scale of the

graph from 120 up, then it looks way

bigger than it actually is.

So here's a quick

mnemonic to help you remember.

If it doesn't go to

zero, that graph is a weirdo.

Tip number two, check the Y axis again

and make sure it exists.

Apple loves to do this in their

presentations to achieve minimalism in

design and in truthfulness.

Remember, if there are no

labels, you're being told fables.

Number three, make sure the bars are the

correct relative size.

Just like Apple, Nvidia loves to use

charts with no labels, but they do a

bonus lie where they just make the size

of the graph whatever they want.

Remember, bad bar size guaranteed lies.

Which brings us back to OpenAI.

They have no Y axis.

The bars are not the correct relative

size, but they did a new thing where the

bigger numbers have smaller bars.

The CEO claimed that it was just a series

of unfortunate typos that for some reason

only ever made their products look much

better than they were.

Weird.

And again, this was in a presentation

about how their flagship product, which

they claim is just as good as talking to

a PhD level expert still lies constantly,

but slightly less than last week.

This is the easiest lesson to remember.

If it's OpenAI, you know it's a lie and I

can prove it with a graph.

If it's OpenAI, it's lie.

Yeah, so go ahead and check out

our good friend, Alex

Falcone, check out his channel.

He's got some good stuff on there.

We like him.

We like fighting the good fight.

Thank you, Alex, for

doing what you're doing.

Appreciate you, my friend.

He's got all kinds of things there like

quizzes and he's got super cuts for you.

So it's all entertaining,

fast, snappy, good information.

And you can always validate your

information on your own as well.

Maybe check out one of his comedy shows.

I don't know.

Might be fun.

I don't know.

All right.

So we're not gonna do another transition.

(Imitates Music)

Drum and bass, drum and bass.

(Imitates Drum Beat)

You're feeling the vibe.

Oh yeah, oh yeah.

(Imitates Drum Beat)

Wasn't that impressive?

Gosh, I'm amazing.

I'm so good at what I do.

We're gonna turn the tide a little bit

and go again to social media, but now

we're gonna go into something that caught

on my feed a couple of days ago.

And I thought it important

to share with other people.

You know,

it might not seem like it, but I consider

myself an artist in

some ways and what I do.

Daniel, our co-founder is an artist.

Many people I know are artists in the

truest way possible.

And this video came up on my feed and the

video, just to be clear,

I'm gonna show my screen.

It's called "I'm Sorry,

but You Need to Hear This."

It's the most clickbaity video you've

ever seen in your entire life.

Here's the thing though.

The message is pretty good.

And I'm gonna play most of the video, not

all of it, so we can get to

the message and talk about it.

I think it's a pretty central part of

what we're talking about here when we

talk about sustainability.

Let's take a quick look right now.

Years ago, I watched my mentor get this

band into the studio.

They sat down, went to have a

conversation with them, and they wanted

to get this album out.

There's like three guys in this band and

they were really

excited about this album.

They had goals with this thing.

And my mentor goes through

and does the typical thing.

He asked them a bunch of questions about

where they are and what

they wanna do with this album.

And then he asked them this one question

that I've heard him ask a

thousand times at the time.

And he said, "When do you

want this album out by?"

And that's when the band goes, "Well, we

don't really have a deadline.

We just want it to sound really good and

we're willing to work as long as it takes

to get this album out by."

My mentor then laughs, you know, and he

says, "So you probably want

it out before you die, right?"

And of course, you know,

everybody laughs a little bit.

The band's like, "Yeah, of

course, of course we do."

And that's when my

mentor gets super serious.

And he goes,

"So when do you plan on dying?"

And the room got quiet.

Everyone was just like,

"What did he just say?"

And you could tell that they were trying

to kind of gather their thoughts and they

were trying to figure

out what was going on.

And they're like, "Well, I guess I never

really thought of it that way."

My mentor was like, "Yeah, of course you

haven't thought of it that way."

It's like, "That's why I'm here.

So when do you want this album out by?"

And that's when they kind of sat down and

they all looked at each other and they

said, "You know what?

Let's shoot for the end of the year."

And the reason I bring up this story is

because when that

happened, it was about September.

And this is as of recording this video,

it's September right now.

And they had a goal to get this stuff

done by the end of the year.

Maybe you're in a similar spot right now.

I want to tell you this story because I

hope that you also learned the same

lesson that I also learned that day.

This is what he taught

me with that conversation.

I had a conversation with

him afterwards about it.

I said, "That was a

little harsh, don't you think?"

And he laughed and he

said, "Music outlives people.

People do not outlast anything except for

the things that they create.

That outlasts them for

years, for generations."

He said, "It would have been a disservice

if he hadn't said that to them."

Would have been a disservice

if he hadn't said that to them.

Wow, pretty deep, pretty dark.

But I think it's a worthwhile thing to

discuss for just a smidge of time.

I have struggled with this for a lot and

I think, well, I don't think, I know I

agree with a majority of the sentiment.

The sentiment being,

what are you waiting for?

You're waiting for things to be perfect.

You think you have an

infinite amount of time.

No one on this planet has

an infinite amount of time.

And human beings don't outlive anything

beyond the things that they create or

their children, right?

They don't outlive their children.

Their children outlive them.

The things they make can outlive them,

can have impact beyond them.

We're not talking about

legacy, we're just talking about

things that sustain and last.

And as I think about that, I think about

all the things that I personally have

stopped myself from doing

because it wasn't good enough.

I thought I had more time to do, et

cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

All the excuses that I make.

And then I think about today's recording.

I think about today's broadcast.

If you're listening to this right now,

fun fact, I'm exhausted.

I've had a day, had a couple

of days and it's only Tuesday.

I really wanna go to bed.

I really don't wanna make this episode,

but I'm doing it anyway.

And I'm doing it because even if I've got

0.5% energy in the tank,

I'm living off of Diet Pepsi and

espressos and coffee right now.

Not a sponsor.

Something that I make right

now in front of my quote unquote

proverbial shit

might've meant something to someone.

I would have regretted having not made

something and gotten in front of my stuff

and clicking the record button right now.

(Sniffles)

One of the things we try to shoot for

here at ZeroDot is to be a little rough,

a little more creative.

And just the only thing that

matters is just showing up.

Just show up.

Doesn't gotta be sexy.

Doesn't gotta be good.

Just show up.

Some weeks will be good, some weeks won't

be good, but at least we'll have shown up

and done the thing and

provided something to someone that

might've needed it at that point.

And I think about that and I think about

an artist's conundrum,

where sometimes artists get in this trap

of wanting to impress,

needing to impress people.

I do too.

Same thing happens to me.

Yet we know something kinda magical

happens when we turn off that expectation

and just pretend like we're having a

conversation with a buddy.

Just chillin', relaxin',

chatin' it up.

Tryin' to impart something to someone,

tell a joke, tell a story.

The expectations fall away.

Things usually get a little simpler and

easier, more direct.

And...

we look back and go, "Why did I make it

so complicated in the beginning?"

All I had to do was just tell it

straight, do it straight.

Get rid of all the muck and the mess and

the wires and the complication and the

obfuscation and just do the thing.

Now there are some days where doing the

thing is so demonstrably difficult and I

probably should take a day,

take a break or take a breather.

But not today, not for me.

There's a lot more I

wanna do before I'm gone.

And I will be gone someday, just like

you'll be gone someday, which is why it's

important to take time to waste time.

It's also important to

take time to do things.

It's my pleasure, it's

my privilege to be here

to whoever's listening slash watching.

To give you some kind of solace

as we keep trucking

along in this crusted earth.

It's my honor.

And I wanna remind

myself and remind all of us

that we don't have as

much time as we think we do.

So what are you waiting for?

Dang, that's profound.

Should have been a zero dot moment.

It's not, but it's close to it.

I was thinking about that as I watched

that video a couple of days ago and I

thought, that is

something worth talking about here

for our zero dot fam here on the counter

hitville, counter hit city,

counter hitia.

We haven't decided what we're called yet,

but the counter hit,

where we talk about

things in a real fashion.

So with that.

(Imitates Music)

Transition.

(Imitates Music)

Is it

getting old yet?

The bit?

It's probably old right now, but if I do

it like one or two more times,

it'll get funny again, I bet.

Anyway, moving on to our next topic.

Our next little bit here, about things

that Sam cannot get out of his mind.

That's right, things I

can't get out of my head.

I made the mistake of going down a rabbit

hole and unearthing a

core memory of my childhood

and discovering something new, something

old, sometimes blue, although in this

case, sometimes purple.

And,

enjoying that journey,

but also kind of astounded

at where that brought me and how it

brought me to a parallel and kind of a

metaphor and allegory to things that are

happening right now in 2026.

Yet, what I was stumbling down was a bit

of nostalgia from the 90s and the 80s.

What the heck am I talking about?

What the heck am I

talking about?

Well, I'm talking about

memories of when I was a child and I was

fascinated slash

potentially obsessed with

a certain comic book character.

Now, if you know me well, you might think

you know what comic

book character that is.

Is it Spider-Man?

Is it Wolverine?

Ooh, Wolverine would be a good one.

And I do have a lot to say about that

character, but I'm gonna wait for another

episode to talk about that.

Was it Batman?

Superman?

Eh, kind of.

But no, there's one core

memory I had relating to

the Sunday comics.

There was a comic book character that

showed up only in our Sunday newspaper.

No other paper?

Not the daily paper as far as I was

aware, just the Sunday paper.

that particular character, that

particular comic that

I was obsessed with was

The Phantom.

That's right, ladies and gentlemen.

The Phantom.

What the heck is The Phantom?

I'm really glad you asked.

The Phantom, this is coming straight from

Wikipedia, was an American adventure

comic strip first published by Lee Falk,

the creator of The

Phantom, in February, 1936.

That's a long time ago.

That's 90 years ago as of

February 17th of this year.

Wow.

The main character of The Phantom is a

fictional costumed crime fighter who

operates from the fictional

African country of Bangala.

It has several adaptations.

It is a property of the King Features

Syndicate, who's a conglomerate that owns

almost all of Lee Falk's

creations, including Mandrake,

who's another character of note.

It was a Sunday strip that I read when I

was a kid in the 90s,

and I loved this character.

And I remember asking my father about

this character, and they

told me the basic stuff, that

he was a crime fighter.

He had an identity called The Phantom.

He went by the name of Kit Walker.

He was called The Ghost Who

Walks, or The Immortal One.

And he had two pistols by his side, and I

think he kind of sort of talked to

animals, sometimes not, ehh, negligible.

He had no powers of any

kind, but he had a cool mask.

It was the first time we saw a comic book

character where the eyes were

kind of lit out or whited out.

Fun fact, Lee Falk did that

because he was trying to mimic

Roman statues that had the eyes whited

out, not knowing that the eyes, the

pupils being whited out was actually just

a result of deterioration in age and not

the original artist's rendition.

But that whited out look that Batman

would later use and other characters

would use for their costumes

first came from The Phantom.

The character was cool.

He was fighting pirates, punching bad

guys, protecting

wildlife, wore a purple suit.

Purple's cool.

Fun fact, it was purple because

apparently he wanted

the suit to be gray, but

gray didn't come out super well on the

stripped, like the

coloring of the newspaper.

So they used purple and he

just kind of lamented with it.

And originally he wanted to call the

character the Ghost.

So fun fact, have you ever seen that

episode of the animated Batman, the

animated series where

it says the gray ghost?

That's probably where

they got the name from.

I remember this character, not knowing

too much about it, but I remember the

character like reading the Sunday strip,

but that's not where my rabbit hole

stops because upon stumbling upon this, I

remembered a television

show that I was obsessed with.

Called the Defenders of the Earth.

See, I liked The Phantom so much.

My father got me a VHS tape of a couple

of episodes of the Defenders of the Earth

TV show from the 80s.

And this was a cartoon show that had

Flash Gordon, Mandrake,

Luthor and their children

or

adopted children or whatever.

And of course, The Phantom.

And I was obsessed with this show.

The show is pure 80s

toy selling

propaganda.

It was meant probably to sell toys, to

sell merchandise of some kind.

Such was the way of children's cartoon

shows of the 80s, thanks to good old

Ronald Reagan, who kind of lifted the

gates of advertising to

children back in this time.

So, Key Man and GI Joe and Transformers,

they were all just

made to sell toys, right?

I mean, let me not argue any other way.

Defenders of the Earth was also a TV show

to help kind of re-enliven

the brand of these characters.

Mandrake and The Phantom

are properties of Lee Falk.

He had Jim Gordon.

Luthor was like Mandrake's right-hand

man, kind of assistant of some kind.

And keep these characters in the common

global lexicon for others.

This show is wild.

It runs for 65 episodes, which is insane.

Only one season, apparently.

Remember when seasons were much smaller?

We'll get to that in just a little bit.

But apparently in the cartoon world, a

season was only about 65 episodes.

And that was, I guess it got

syndication, and that was that.

In this version of Defenders of the

Earth, The Phantom has one superpower.

He doesn't have any superpowers in other

versions of this character, but I guess

to compare with everyone else, he has one

superpower where he is

able to summon the power of 10

tigers or lions.

I can't remember which one it is.

And he gets temporary strength and

temporary speed from I guess the animal

life, where he comes from, Bengala.

The theme song is also really corny and

bad, but I feel the need

to show off the theme song.

Because the theme song was, the lyrics of

the theme song was written by

the one and only Stan Lee.

Defenders of the Earth Defenders

Out of the sky His rockets ignite Jets

into battle Life faster than light

Flashpoint Lord of the jungle The hero

who stops The beasts call

him brother The gods to war

Defenders of the Earth Defenders

Master of magic spells and illusion

Enemies crumble in fear and confusion And

drink Defenders of the Earth Defenders

His strength is a legend His skills

conquer all Armed with

his power We never will fall

No more Defenders of the Earth Defenders

With our new young heroes Proving their

worth Or become eight Defending the Earth

Defenders of the Earth Defenders

Defenders of the Earth

Ah, good Aedes cheese, what can I say?

Good Aedes cheese, that's right.

Defenders of the Earth, my favorite part

of that lyric is

defenders of the Earth defenders.

Stanley wrote that,

wrote that theme song.

Fun wild ride, I was rewatching some

episodes on YouTube.

This is where the rabbit hole starts

really starting folks because

defenders of the Earth is available on

YouTube for free, not

by some random uploader.

No, no, defenders of the

Earth is actually uploaded

by Comics Kingdom and Comics Kingdom is a

direct subsidiary of

those that own the Phantom comic book.

Let me say that again.

Comics Kingdom, uploaded the entire

Defenders of the Earth, all 65 episodes

on YouTube for free.

And they're in direct partnership with

King Feature Syndicate who owns the

property of Phantom.

So then that got me wondering,

wait a minute,

the rabbit hole

deepens because in addition to this

cartoon show, Defenders of the Earth and

a movie that I never really saw if I'm

being honest, there was one other thing

about Phantom that I was

obsessed with when I was a kid.

And that is a television

show called Phantom 2040.

That's right folks, Phantom 2040 aired

1994, November 18th,

what is Phantom 2040?

Well,

remember in the 90s, there was like this

movement to take all of our classic

characters and put them in the future.

I think this kind of started with

Spider-Man 2099, which actually let me

ask, Spider-Man 2099 happened first.

Yes, 92, 92.

So yeah, about two years later, we have

Phantom 2040 inspired by that.

And this is a cartoon show where the

character of the Phantom

exists in this world in 2040.

That's only 13 years away from right now,

but back in 1994, that felt like a really

gosh darn long time.

This show is kind of

revolutionary and ahead of its time.

Let me set the stage for you.

So before we talk about the plot,

we got Ron Perlman in the show, Margot

Kidder, Mark Hamill, Rob Paulson, these

heavy hitter voice actors are playing

major roles in this particular show.

The animation was done by Studio Hearst

Corporation, but most importantly, the

character designs were done

by none other than Peter Chung.

And if you know who Peter Chung is, he

was prominent for his work

on Aeon Flux, the MTV series.

I mean, whoa,

whoa.

I mean, what the?

This art

is wild here.

It was a rebrand, an opportunity to

refresh the character of the Phantom for

a new audience in the year 2040.

Now, this is where the rabbit hole really

begins because I gave you all this story

about why I'm attached to the character

and why I thought the character was cool.

I told you about Defenders of the Earth

for a reason because 2040 is the complete

opposite of Defenders of the Earth in

many logistical political ways.

Let me explain.

So

as I said before, in

Defenders of the Earth,

was a television show that was brought

from the time in which Reagan kind of

opened up the gates in which advertisers

could advertise whatever they wanted to

during kids' TV shows

to help sell toys, right?

Then comes the Clinton administration and

they put new safeguards in place and kind

of undo some of the things that Reagan

does and have rules and regulations about

children's cartoon programming having

education stuff to it.

Meaning there has to be an element of

education behind these TV shows.

In that vein, Phantom 2040 is a TV show

about a crime fighter for sure.

It's also trying to espouse lessons about

environmental conservation, which kind of

makes sense when you think about the fact

that the Phantom was kind of a fighter of

the natural world order in 1930s when his

character came from Africa.

So let me set the stage for what this

story is about because this is wild that

this came out in 94 and there are so many

parallels to this story

that can be taken home to now.

It's just insane.

The year is 2040.

This is straight from

the Wikipedia article.

All environments, disasters, and the

economic resource wars

from the early 21st century,

resource wars,

oil anyone, ram shortages anyone, et

cetera, have decimated the fragile

ecosystem balance of an

earth once teeming with life.

Everywhere, the privileged and wealthy

continue to thrive in expensive real

estate developments that

tower above the suffering masses.

The victims of earth's misfortune have

been forced to persist on scavenge refuse

from the past on the mangled streets of

four Lauren city states.

In Metropia, once known as New York City,

according to this article, although from

what I've seen of the show, I don't

remember them ever calling it New York

City, but yes, the main city, the main

location for this story is Metropia.

The largest and most powerful of the city

states, the powerful Robotics

Manufacturing Corporation, maximum ink,

has slowly shaped a cold, steely urban

center, consisting of huge residential

towers intertwined

with tube train tunnels.

Maximums robotic biots, they call these

things biots, biological optical

transputer system is

the acronym apparently.

Biots have replaced enormous amounts of

human labor and the corporation is

illegally producing prohibited combat

biots to form maximums

private underground army.

Let me say that again.

Maximum robotic biots have replaced

enormous amounts of human labor.

So these are AI robots, robots that

follow instructions and

replace humans in man labor.

And the corporation is illegally

producing primitive combat biots to form

maximums private underground army.

There's parallels here to what's

happening right now in the use of AI and

the use of military development here.

Hmm, under the disguise of efficient

progress, you heard that before?

Don't get in the way of progress.

Under this guise of proficient progress,

maximum has its own plans for the future,

which it refers to as the maximum era.

Through the construction of the fortress

of Cyberville, an immense survival

shelter where only the wealthiest and

most elite humans will retreat and take

over of Metropia by means of its biot

armies, its plans ultimately involve the

dark path of decline and extinction as

the culminating result of man's prior

errors and efforts once earth finally

succumbs to its

slowly deteriorating state.

Whoa.

(Laughs)

I haven't gotten that far

in the show, but holy cow.

In this show, this evil corporation,

Maximum Inc. is trying to get approved

city planning for this

place called Cyberville.

And for the first couple of episodes they

keep getting vetoed or

blocked by, you know,

boardrooms and public

forums and et cetera.

Meanwhile, it seems pretty clear that the

whole purpose of them doing Cyberville is

something pretty nefarious.

And this summarizes that

the point is to be a shelter for when the

whole world goes to,

I guess, nuclear fall.

I don't know, some kind of ruin.

So only an elite few of humans will

survive, the backlash of it.

Wow.

The description reads, "The only hope for

the survival of

humanity is the ghost jungle.

Thousands of square

miles of mutated vegetation

that may be the planet's salvation.

This secret source of life is submerged

beneath Metropia, unseen by most.

College student Kit Walker Jr. is chosen

by fate to save the world, donning the

black mask and purple suit of his people

savior, the 24th Phantom."

Hmm.

The role of the Phantom has been passed

on from father to son since the 16th

century, leading the world to believe

that the Phantom is a

single immortal individual.

Kit, the 24th in line, is young, unsure

and inexperienced, but he finds within

him the courage and might to battle the

evil that threatens to destroy Earth.

Okay, a lot to unpack here.

We have a world that is supposed to be

teeming in a utopia,

but it's actually just

grim with corporate

crime thanks to maximum ink.

You've got a hero donning the name of

Phantom and the mask and the clothing and

all that stuff and taking on the legacy

of the prior Phantoms and

trying to do right by this.

Couple things, this is

a TV show from the 90s.

So the reason why they're using robots is

like bi-ops, these main force that

the character has to fight is because of

children's television rules of being able

to punch, shoot or fight human beings.

If you watch the animated Batman series,

a great show, you'll notice that

Batman was never allowed to shoot anyone

and no one really ever got shot like

harmfully in any kind of way, but if you

make it a robot, it's okay.

You can do a lot more to a robot than you

couldn't do to a human being.

So there's a reason for that.

And a lot of the things about

this show are coded in that.

For instance, in the original Phantom,

Phantom had two pistols that he used.

He supposedly never killed people, but I

found a couple of instances where he

would kill people in the comics.

In the show, they make it very clear the

Phantom never kills.

He doesn't have pistols.

He has like these laser gun things that

lock on and he's only

ever shot the bi-ops.

He's got a grappling hook like Batman.

I don't think

the Phantom had a grappling hook before,

but there's a lot of inspiration from

Batman here as well.

Kind

of diving even deeper.

Kit Walker Jr. played

by Scott Valentine, who

I believe was an actor

famous for his role in Family Ties, plays

this college student who is just super

obsessed with the environment and trying

to get back to nature and

trying to be a geologist

until he stumbles upon an old ruin, an

old jungle, ghost jungle inside of the

city down below like where

the old railway system was.

And somehow he finds his father's old

temple, his old ruins,

and it's got a new suit.

And he meets this man named Garan who

tells him that the Phantom on his 18th

birthday will don the new mask and be the

new voyage for this

new hope for the world.

And Kit is unbelieving, doesn't wanna do

it, but he puts on the mask, he puts on

the costume and he has the gear and he

has to save his friends from a bi-op

situation or like, I think it

was a rave that was happening

in an arcade.

And before you know it, of

course, he dons the role of

being the Phantom.

His opening narration even is the year is

2040, the place is Metropia, here a new

hero prepares for action, the man who

cannot die, the ghost

who walks, the Phantom.

The Phantoms pledge to fight evil and

injustice wherever they may be found.

In this future world, in this dying city

with the fate of the earth and all

humanity in the

balance, the Phantom is there.

It's interesting, in this system, he

doesn't have any superpowers,

but he has a suit that can repel bullets.

He also has a suit that can transmogrify

his face for security cameras so no one

can ever figure out who he is so they're

always thinking that's the

same Phantom from before.

Turns out, the maximum ink the company,

the CEO, head woman person thing played

by Margot Kidder, her husband fought and

or killed the

original or the last Phantom.

So there's like a little bit of a blood

feud there, so there's animosity.

Kid has a scientist professor at his

university who figures out who he is very

quickly and offers to help.

You've got Garan, his mentor.

He finds an orphan cyber surfer who hacks

people's, hacks the web using avatars of

other people so you can't see

who he is using web cameras.

I mean, this is 1994.

And you have an entire episode where Kid

is hacking into something, he keeps

getting traced and the person who finds

his traces supposedly

is a helpful older lady.

Turns out it's a cyber kid who's using an

avatar to make like a VTuber

version of himself as

someone else rather than who he is.

I mean, this is wild stuff.

1994.

You got a person named Sagan Cruz played

by Leah Rameini, Rameini, sorry.

You might know her from I

think it was King of the Hill.

No, it wasn't King of the Hill.

It was King of Queens.

That's where she was most famous from.

She plays like this

enforcer police person who kind of

doesn't work for maximum, kind of works

for the state, but is

looking to chase Phantom.

And but no to her,

the person she falls in love with is Kit.

But does know the Kit is Phantom.

Ooh la la.

You've also got Hubert Graft played by

the great Ron Perlman, at least in the

first season, apparently in second

season, he's played by a different actor,

Richard Lynch, who's like this guy who's

got a head and he's part of a torso, but

he gets planted into these different

mechs and bodies with bio parts and is

able to like hunt down the

Phantom and like do whatever

Madison's doing is.

You've got

Maxwell Madison, who is Rebecca's

psychotic son, whose intelligence is

belied by his laziness and outward

disinterest in almost everything.

He has a cat that he's

always stroking called Baudelaire.

And he's depicted as kind of being a

little disturbed and a little

uninterested, but the moment Phantom

starts wrecking things, he becomes

interested again, kind of has a little

bit of a joker vibe to it.

And then you've got Dr.

Jack.

Dr.

Jack, who is this sensationalist kind of

TV DJ jockey, who's always spitting the

news in a way that makes maximum Inc.

look good and Phantom look bad, like

Phantom's the bad guy, voiced by none

other than Mark Hamill.

Dude,

this, mm,

mm,

I keep going on.

I've only ever, I've only seen the first

five episodes recently.

There's 35 episodes total.

But I mean, the parallels to what this

story is supposed to quote unquote make

believe versus what's happening now in

2026 onwards is just insane.

I'm seeing so many parallels.

In one of the episodes, the Phantom

destroys a factory that is being used to

make, I think, biotes of some kind.

Again, biotes are the AI robot things and

literally makes a comment about how, you

know, they're trying to get this thing

for Cyberville approved so they can do

this legally, but right now they're doing

it illegally and no one can stop them.

I mean, it's just,

sorry, I just, this is wild to me.

I'm definitely gonna be rewatching the

entire series and just kind of unfolding

what happens in this story.

It's wild, such a progressive story

happened in 1990s television for kids.

The writing is pretty elevated.

It definitely is surprising that it's

written for children in

a lot of different ways.

Very, very surprising in that way.

And what I'm walking away from as I think

about this even more is

if you grew up in the 90s, you had this

television show that literally depicted

all the evils to be

wary of and not do them.

And yet in a parallel universe, a lot of

these evils are happening right now.

There should be like, we should make a

segment on the counter hit show of

all the times in which science fiction or

animation or cartoons or TV warned us

about the future and we didn't listen.

This should be one of those things.

It lasted only 35

episodes, apparently two seasons.

It was critically acclaimed, but I guess

it didn't make any money.

It's always the way, isn't it?

Always the way.

And according to this Wikipedia article,

Stu Rosen was the voice director and he

along with Andrea Romana from her work in

"Batman the Animated Series" are lauded

for their impact on

animated adventure television.

Elevating the script, elevating the

acting, getting high talented movie and

film and TV actors to play these

characters in these roles.

Yeah, from what I've seen the first

couple of five episodes,

absolutely for sure.

So "The Phantom", have

you heard of "The Phantom"?

Phantom's pretty cool.

I highly recommend checking out "The

Phantom" in any kind

of incarnation you can.

It's kind of basic in a lot of ways, but

this particular TV show

"2040" is pretty interesting.

Oh, and there was a video game, a video

game on the "Super

Nintendo" and the "Sega Genesis".

And I believe the game here as well, that

it's actually a "Metroidvania".

Wow.

1994, ladies and gentlemen.

What wild, wild, wild times.

I'll be

coming back to "The Phantom" and giving

you my updates as I rewatch the series

and watch all of it together.

But again, it's almost like we got plenty

of warnings ahead of time, what might be

coming our way in the 21st century.

And we ignored them.

We ignored every single one.

You can watch "All of Phantom 2040" right

now on their YouTube

channel, "Comics Kingdom".

It's all right there, along with "All of

Defenders of the Earth".

And also, Flash Gordon is there.

"Prince Valiant", "Crazy Cat".

Yeah, they have a ton of different shows

that are on their YouTube channel.

They're just there for free.

You can just watch them.

Have a good time.

That's how I'm watching them.

Sadly, "The Phantom 2040",

speaking of like art

preservation and so forth,

is not available

commercially in any other way.

There are a couple of releases

of the first couple of episodes that

comprise like a mini movie called "The

Ghost Who Walks", the first five

episodes, which is

what I've seen already.

There's a couple of duology VHS tapes

that came out in the 90s.

But beyond that, there's no full released

collection of every single episode.

The only way to get it legally is to go

on YouTube right now and watch it.

So I don't know.

I think "The Phantom"

is gonna make a comeback.

I think someone's gonna get a great idea

with that IP and do

something fun with it.

Who knows?

If you are used to Batman and Batman's

like your vibe, I don't think "The

Phantom" is gonna like

impress you super much.

You have to kind of remember that "The

Phantom" is like the first masked crime

fighter in many ways.

That being said, it's fun.

It's interesting.

It's cool what they do.

But in the form of television to make a

story work for a superhero.

The writing is pretty elevated in 2040.

And like I said, it's got this cyberpunk

realism slash future

forward thinking vibe to it.

It's surreal to watch right

now in 2026 and go, holy cow.

Yeah, there's a lot of stuff that's

wrong, but there's a lot of

stuff that's kind of right.

Holy cow.

So I recommend big

plus there in my opinion.

Moving on.

Shoo,

transition time.

Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo,

doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo,

doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo,

doo, doo, doo, doo, doo,

Hey,

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(Imitates Music)

So folks, this is your

first time at Counterhit.

We like to look at Reddit

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And as leadership consultants, I'm not a

Redditor, but I know a

little bit about leadership.

I literally just spoke, I just did a

workshop today about leadership, about

engaging and retaining talent for your

audience and for your teams.

So let's look at Reddit over at the

Reddit slash leadership page and see what

they're talking about today.

So look here, we have r slash leadership.

We have things that are hot right now.

Again, I'm not a Redditor.

I don't even have an account.

We're looking at these

things for the very first time.

Ooh, we have some things about AI.

Let's see.

How much of your operation

actually lives in someone's head?

That's a very common problem.

That's very easily solved by just

document, document, document.

Hmm.

Just curious, what's the actual

difference between the top performers at

your company and everyone else?

Ooh, that's very

fascinating and interesting.

Probably not something that I'd be able

to weigh in too much on.

Maybe we'll get back to

that a little bit later.

Sports performance

coaching versus regular coaching.

That's kind of interesting.

These are just kind of general questions.

Hmm.

Oh, here's one.

What's a task you were genuinely good at,

but had to hand off anyway?

The OP says, "I used to handle a part of

the business that I genuinely loved and

was great at, but holding on to it way

longer than I needed to

ended up capping growth."

Yeah.

"Anyone else had a similar experience,

had to hand it off."

This is a very common phenomenon where we

like something and we enjoy it.

If we keep doing that thing over and over

again, just the nature of keeping our

hands in that pot prevents us from being

able to do other things at that time we

would have otherwise.

Now, there's a slant here where I as your

leadership coach and consultant would

want you to do the things you want to do.

And if you can't find those things, the

job that you're at, find other job, find

other work, work with your boss to train

roles in some capacity, I would champion

you to do those things.

At the same time though, within

leadership, oftentimes we get in trouble

for selfishly holding on to things that

we enjoy when it could just be given to

someone else and give them an

opportunity to grow as well.

So that's basically the end all be all

here, but I'm curious

what people have to say here.

My bad's only one answer.

"Mark Manley."

Mark McInley.

"Someone says here, I was in charge of

marketing, running a marketing department

of about 15 people, and the company

decided to outsource

the website development.

I was required to let go of

responsibility and the company disregard

my involvement in marketing.

The website was held back by months and

months and months because I wasn't

leading and managing the process.

Now we discuss how it affects my

operations and my leadership, but also my

core assets involved.

Sometimes outsourcing, separating from

other elements of the

business is a human mistake.

A business thing, guys,

huge lesson, huge lesson.

I need to get a grip on the

responsibility for the website build."

What?

The OP is talking about how it's a lesson

learned in how it capped their growth.

This is the opposite.

It's basically saying it was a mistake.

I should never have let go.

This is what people are afraid of.

They're always afraid of letting go and

having a significant regret about that.

In many cases, that's

simply not true, unless,

again, it's about what you love, and it's

about the fact that you actually, you

feel the need to level up your skills,

but you don't actually want to.

So that's a pretty common thing.

Pretty common thing

that happens all the time.

So

that's that story right there.

Hmm.

Here's a question.

"How do you not burn out on

hours of virtual meetings?"

Ooh, spicy. 43 upvotes, as opposed to, as

of the time of this recording.

"I've always found

Zoom meetings exhausting.

And after my upcoming promotion, it's

about to be most of my job."

Oh, geez.

"For those of you with lots of direct and

indirect reports, how do you organize the

one-on-ones with dozens of people so you

don't feel like an empty

husk at the end of the day?"

Fascinating.

Hmm.

"I'm curious, what about the Zoom

meetings or Teams meetings or virtual

meetings are so exhausting?"

I'd be curious to kind of ask that

question because everyone's

got different energy sources.

For some people, talking face-to-face to

people virtually is an

energizing experience.

For some people, meetings help them kind

of collect their thoughts.

For some people, they feel

meetings are a waste of time.

They'd rather just respond via email.

Everyone's a little bit

different in this capacity.

It's important to kind of know

where your energy centers are.

That being said, if

this particular promotion,

it's gonna be most of the job.

I'd be curious what that job is.

I mean, there is gonna be a lot of

face-to-face one-on-ones

or Zoom meetings, for sure.

It's required if you have direct reports,

you need to make FaceTime with them.

That being said, spending the time to do

that upfront is always gonna save you

time later on down the line.

So it depends on how you

kind of value that, I suppose.

Curious what people's responses are here.

Someone by the name of Bot responded.

"Discipline."

You're a leader, so ask yourself, "Is

this meeting worth my time when I could

be doing something more productive?"

Oh boy.

Shh.)

For those of you that are listening only,

I just did the Picard

head, brow, rub there.

Okay.

Some people think lots of meetings make

some look busy and valuable.

My argument is, if you're always in

meetings, how are you

getting any work done?

(Laughs)

I hear the argument.

I get it.

And I'm not saying...

This is taking such an extreme stance

against being in meetings.

This even seems to argue

that it's on you to not be in that

meeting meetings and

keep pushing people back.

You're a leader, so ask yourself, "Is

this meeting worth my time when I could

be doing something more productive?"

And then some people think lots of

meetings make some

look busy and valuable.

You've answered your question, kind of,

or you kind of circle along yourself.

You're focusing so

much on hyperproductivity

that you only think meetings are there to

make people look busy and not that

there's another value behind it.

Because meetings bring people together.

Meetings are the connective tissue to the

human beings, the human resources, the

most powerful force on the planet to

getting things done.

And they're necessary, especially when

you're trying to solve a problem

and you don't know what the solution is,

but if you rope people together, you can

come up with the right solution.

Yeah, wild.

Someone, OP responds to this by saying,

"Managing my team and supporting

retention is my job."

Yes, kudos to you.

And one-on-ones are how I do that.

Connecting with my people is relevant.

I need to know what they're struggling

with in order to

clear obstacles for them.

Quote, "Getting any work done," end

quote, "I delegate the work to my team,

billable and admin support non-billable."

There you go, OP,

you're on the right track.

I'm proud of you.

That's the right answer for that.

Absolutely.

I love that you know what your job is.

One person responds, "I started blocking

15 minutes between every call, no

exceptions, and it's the only reason I

still have a shred of sanity left."

OP says that's a good idea.

One-to-ones are hard because you want

your time back, but at the same time, you

want to stay connected with your people.

Someone says, "I was a leader who spent a

mass proportion of my time in

one-on-ones and skip levels.

I had a team of 87 people and met

everyone at least once a quarter, and my

direct reports and the other people,

managers, a lot more

often than that." 87 people?

That's insane.

We've already talked about it, but like

15, 16 is like the sweet spot.

Having more than that's insane.

And

I realized I'd caught

myself in a vicious circle.

A lot of the meetings

were not really meaningful.

My people were so used to them that they

would feel abandoned if I stopped them.

In my next team, I switched my approach

to focus on quality rather than quantity.

The meetings happened more rarely, but

they had a clear purpose and agenda.

We would connect before the meeting.

If there's nothing discussed, we decided

together whether to cancel it.

People didn't feel abandoned, but they

felt that their time was respected and

worked that much better

for everyone in between.

OP likes this approach.

(Inhales)

And appreciates that.

It's not bad.

I have questions about how you determine

when a meeting should be canceled or not.

I'm gonna tell you this spoiler, the

person you're having the meeting with,

they decide if it's

canceled or not, not you.

Don't do it for them.

Quality versus quantity, yeah, sure.

Especially if you have 87 people on your

team, that's insane.

In a better structure, you have the time

to meet with people, even if it was up to

16 people. 87 is just too much.

You should delegate so you meet four

people who are your leads and

they meet with other people.

It's just a whole

thing, it's a whole thing.

Okay, all right.

And someone asked, are

all the meetings necessary?

Whatever, okay.

Someone read it, says, but I'm muting my

mic and working on something else.

And the OP, whether earnestly or not,

it's like, I'm the

host, so they might notice.

(Laughs)

Ooh, it's an interesting comment.

Turn your ability to see yourself off.

It burns way more brain cells if you can

see your own face on the screen.

Totally, my boss is a VP

and she's always camera on.

I don't know how she does it.

I usually have camera on at the start to

say hi, then go camera off.

Yeah,

I guess that could work for some people

if looking at

yourself really exhausts you.

I don't know if that solves the whole

problem, but yeah, sure, if some people

really resonate with that.

Swap recurring sinks for async docs.

Reading a Slack update takes 30 seconds.

Listening to someone talk, though, waste

10 minutes of everyone's energy.

Stop paying the meeting tax.

They're not the same though.

They're two different things.

You miss the emotions.

The emotions are critical.

And as a leader, it's your job to

facilitate emotional and practical needs.

So

I get it, but okay.

Mm.

All right, there's a lot of different

answers all about being

hyper productive, all that stuff.

Oh, here's one.

Someone's rights, being connected is

important, but you do need to manage time

and what you do with it.

Some ideas that work for me, use 20

minute or 45 minute meetings, yes.

A big believer in this.

Don't use 30 minute

meetings or hour long meetings.

That's what Outlook defaults to.

Make them shorter than that.

If it's 20 minutes, it piques people's

attention, makes you

work smarter, not harder.

Helps out. 45 minutes, same thing.

It's less than an hour.

We're in and out.

It's a brainstorming session, but we're

not gonna get caught in the weeds.

Have a weekly meeting using a standup

approach, progress

blockers, help needed, absolutely.

I'll add one more.

Literally stand up in your meeting and

ask your people to stand up.

Because when you stand up, the meeting

goes by faster and you get the same

amount of stuff done.

Literally.

When you're sitting down, you're

comfortable, you're cozy, you

kinda wanna stay where you are.

When you stand up, you're like, "Okay,

let's go, let's go, let's go."

Reduce one-on-ones to

fortnightly or monthly.

I disagree.

You should make your

one-on-ones once a week.

And then by virtue of just always being

connected with your people, they will

cancel on you a lot or reschedule and you

won't have it be once a week anymore.

But I get that.

Be intentional about your one-on-ones.

Have a process to walk

through, not just chitchat.

The podcast manager

tools has a good approach.

Once again, I personally disagree.

Your one-on-ones should be a time in

which your people talk

to you about their issues.

You don't come up with a process or a

structure and agenda.

Your other meetings where you have to

accomplish things and whatever and talk

about challenges or give feedback, that's

outside of your one-on-ones personally.

Have spots in your diary to have more

informal chats with your

staff when they need it.

Could be coffee, open door

hours, office hours, et cetera.

Yeah,

but okay.

If you're having your one-on-ones for

what I think they should be, which is the

employees are the ones driving that

conversation and you're not really

getting too involved beyond just

supporting them and ask them questions

and jotting down notes on

things you can do after that.

Focusing on having time for informal

chats is a little silly.

I trust your ability to be able to have

informal chats wherever they are, water

cooler talk and not.

If you're going down that path or having

an office hours, I would call that magic

time, which is a time in which everyone

hops on the call and works through

problems and challenges and everyone's

just kind of on the call, it's super

informal, but you're getting things done

while you're doing it.

Yeah, and then consider structuring your

team into smaller teams as leads.

Yes, I agree with that as well.

There's no reason to have 87 people

directly reporting to you.

That's insane, that's absolutely crazy.

Okay, good stuff, good stuff, all right.

Let's see if we can

look at one more, one more.

(Humming)

Okay, here's one.

How do you decision

delegate from two days ago?

Opie says, "Hi."

Reading through a recent post, I'm the

bottleneck and saw a comment talking

about people abdicating responsibility

back up and advised decision delegating.

How do you make that

effective and long lasting?

We call that dumping or passing the buck.

I'm a VP level admin and I feel like I'm

constantly having to remind my director

and frontline supervisors that

the shifts are theirs to run.

And yet every decision, including the

daily staff schedule, comes back to me.

I like some real ideas on this or

examples of how people are successful.

At this point, my leadership has me

convinced that everything is out of

control and it's a

character flaw of mine.

This has not been my leadership

experience on the role, so

I find it hard to believe.

Prior to this role, the criticism was

prioritizing people over company goals.

Hmm, okay.

Oh, my leadership has me convinced that

everything is out of control and it's a

character flaw of mine.

So people upstairs to you were telling

you this is the fault of yours.

Huh.

And prior to this, criticism was

prioritizing people over company goals.

Okay, let me talk about that last part.

If you're higher up in the company,

there's kind of this idea of like, you

gotta handle it on your own.

You're kind of by yourself.

If you can't handle on your

own, it's kind of your fault.

I'm not saying this is right.

I don't agree with this.

I'm just saying that's

kind of how they feel.

So I totally get that aspect.

They're wrong and it's unfair to you, but

that's their vibe, okay?

The issue being

you have tasks that your director and

frontline supervisors should be handling

that keep coming to you

over and over and over again.

And it's bottlenecking your

time, making things inefficient.

Yeah, that's inefficient

use of the entire structure.

At that point, you should be the

supervisor and you should be the director

and you should fire those people.

I'm not saying you should, but like

that's, if you're having to do those

things every single time,

there's a structural issue.

It could be a confidence issue on there.

It could be that they're just running it

by you to get your thumbs up on it and

that's all they want.

And you can tell them you don't need to

give thumbs up anymore.

Maybe they just wanna give

you something for visibility.

I don't know.

It could be that for the daily staff

schedule that there's so much strife

happening that

anytime a schedule happens,

there's all this pushback on the floor.

And they feel that if they get you to

sign off on it, they get less pushback.

That's worth exploring and having a

conversation, see how you can solve that

and see what's going on there.

That might be worth you diving into the

trenches of the situation to really

figure out what's going on.

Maybe that's it, I don't know.

But I like that you're recognizing that

it's a challenge and that it's a problem.

I'm curious what the Reddit

comments have to say here.

I have a suspicion though, that some of

the answer to this problem will have to

be learning the artful skill of

disappointing people.

That's right, disappointing people.

The artful skill of making people upset

with you and making them feel like you're

a good for nothing boss that's never

there for them, even

though it's not true.

But you do that so that way they learn

the lesson of relying on themselves and

using you as a resource when necessary.

That's sometimes a necessary thing.

That might be what we have to do here,

but I'm curious to see

what Reddit says about this.

First comment here, this

is not a character flaw.

Your team is just you fixing everything.

You need strict rules

for what gets escalated.

Daily schedule should

never be on that list.

If they bring a problem to you, they must

bring at least two proposed solutions.

Otherwise send them a

way to figure it out.

A proposed solution was chain of command

and a decision tree.

That's the OP responding to that.

It is true that at a higher level, when

you present a problem, there's kind of an

unofficial language of like, "Hey, look,

I'm not here to give you a problem."

And like, you

invented solution out of air.

Here are the solutions we're thinking.

But it's also a rule that like, "Hey,

look, we're at a real rut and

I need your insight on this.

Tell me your insight so we

can execute upon your insight."

That's a fair thing too.

I don't know if I agree

with that particular mandate.

This person saying, "Your team is just

used to you fixing everything.

I don't wanna make that assumption.

It seems possible.

There's a lot more I'd wanna know about

this person's story,

their history, et cetera.

There could be more

to it than just that."

It is true that if you're the one that

responds and does it every single time,

that yeah, they're

gonna get used to that.

That being said, if you're

the VP and you say no once,

they should get the hint pretty quickly.

So I suspect there's more

to this story than just that.

Someone else responds, "It sounds like

you've built a team that's been rewarded

for passing the buck upward.

The fix is stopping cold turkey."

Yeah.

Next time a director walks in with

scheduled conflict, just

ask, "What did you decide?"

And stare at them until they answer.

Silence is a weapon here.

They'll squirm that after a few times

they'll stop treating

your office like a help desk.

Yeah, let's talk about that.

So like I said, disappointing people,

literally throwing the buck back at them,

saying it's their decision to make.

And then that's silence.

Human beings hate silence.

Hate it.

So much so that in this video, in this

podcast and in other episodes we've made,

I've actually kept a lot of our pauses

and silences in there just to see if

people are listening past that point.

A lot of people click off because it just

makes them feel that uncomfortable.

In a real life

conversation, when there's silence,

eight seconds is about as long as most

people can handle before they go, "Mm,

someone say something."

They squirm.

And what ends up happening is because we

all have that general

anxiety about silence.

We are the ones that fill in the silence

when we're leaders and we shouldn't be.

We should be asking the question and

literally just letting them answer.

So for instance, when this person

recommends, what did you decide?

The person might be like, "I don't know.

"We were giving it to you."

And then just wait

and say nothing.

Maybe repeat yourself once

before they finally get the hint.

That can be powerful for sure.

Again, I'd recommend that in a lot of

situations like this, but I feel like

there's more to the story than that.

The OP says, "Touche, I

started this recently though.

Some staff are definitely

taking to this than others."

So, okay, sounds like you're doing some

of that and some people aren't.

So there's something else going on here.

I don't know what that is.

Hmm.

We have a long

response here from someone.

They even say slightly long response.

I'd be careful about turning this into a

character flaw instead as a muscle skill

that needs to be strengthened.

If every decision, including the daily

schedule, is still coming back to you,

then somewhere the

delegation hasn't really stuck.

Yeah.

To make it effective and long lasting,

I'd make the decision

boundaries very explicit.

What is there to decide, what they need

to bring you on in, and what should only

be escalated if

there's a real risk attached.

That's essentially a simple

decision escalation ladder.

And then the harder part, they say this

in bold text, "Stop rescuing."

If someone brings you a

decision that they are

supposed to take, don't solve it.

Ask, "What do you think we should do?"

Or, "What decision are you recommending?"

Yep, a good old flip, asking a what or a

how question, having them decide.

I'd also ask a slightly different

question, what's stopping them from

making the decision themselves?

Great question.

Are they unclear in their authority?

Worried they'll get it wrong?

Have they been second guessed before?

Sometimes people keep escalating because

somewhere along the way, they've learned

that it's safer to bring the decision

back up than own it.

Great call out, yeah.

That's the bit you need to understand if

you want the change to actually stick.

And once you've agreed to these

boundaries, keep coming back to them in

one-on-ones and team conversations until

they become the normal way of working.

And if this hasn't been your leadership

experience in other roles, I look at the

system before

assuming the problem is you.

Great call out.

That's a goated response.

Six up votes, I'd give

that way more if I could.

OP responds, "I was

recently assigned a new supervisor.

He has truly pointed out areas of growth

for me, like staying on target and has

also pointed out how there are too many

people in other programs

trying to run my program.

While it will forever be hard for me to

stop rescuing and I need to maintain

boundaries better, I truly am looking

forward to asking folks,

"What are your solutions?"

A side note, a staff came to me with a

systems complaint today

within which they are complicit.

I then asked, "Have

any ideas or solutions?"

She confidently responded, "Nope."

And left, monkey face.

And

the other person responds, "Ouch."

Follow up with a, "Think about how to

correct the complaint or reframe to what

could be a possible solution.

That's great to hear

about the new supervisor."

Last person says here, "I

don't decision delegate.

I task work delegate.

I'm employed to make informed decisions,

not crank out task work."

Yeah, okay.

That's one way of working at it.

Got it.

Okay, good stuff.

Good stuff all around.

This is actually a really good topic,

really good conversation.

It's a tough thing to kind of navigate.

Again, it requires being

the bad guy in some context.

Some people want to be likable under any

context, any circumstance,

that they can't bother to do that.

Put that boundary up, have that awkward

pause, set those

boundaries, disappoint people.

That's huge.

However, that is the way to move on up in

a strange, weird way.

So thank you, OP, for

asking that question.

All right.

And with that,

let's get to our final segment.

(Imitates Buzzer)

With that.

Been a good episode today.

Talked about crunch, grinding, talked

about sustainability,

talked about weird television and

anomalies into the world

we're facing right now.

All good stuff.

Yeah, for real.

Good stuff all around.

As I said before in this

podcast, in this episode today,

I almost didn't make this one.

I almost decided I can't do this.

I'm exhausted, I'm tired,

I'm beat, I'm broken down.

But I showed up.

I did the thing and I'm here.

And I'm glad I did.

I really am.

I hope I don't come across as someone

who's upset or grumpy or beleaguered to

be in front of the mic in

front of the camera today.

I do this because I love it and I do it

because I wanna help people.

I also do it because I wanna create a

space of solace away from all the

craziness out there.

It's a good reminder for myself that good

enough is sometimes truly good enough.

It's also a reminder of

being our true selves and allowing

ourselves to be in that messy pot and

there's always the next one.

I'm gonna be dead someday and you're

gonna be dead someday and I hope you

don't find that as a

dark thought.

I hope we all think about death on

occasion so we know what

we're doing for the future.

When I think about that, it helps empower

me to go, what am I

wasting my time on right now?

Not in terms of that one guy who's like,

let's be more productive.

Screw that, I'm not about productivity.

I'm about, you know, with the waking

energy and hours and youth and vigor that

you have now, depending

on where you are in life,

what are you wasting your time on?

And something should be a waste.

Like we talk about on our show every

single time, let's

waste some time together.

We are wasting time but wasted time is

not a waste, especially when we use it to

recharge ourselves for the

next fight and the next battle.

What are you wasting your time on?

Recently I've had some

things happen at my work that I won't say

more about, but that have made me

question what am I quote

unquote wasting my time on?

What could I be using my efforts towards?

That's more

me coded, whatever that means.

Gestures just to myself.

That doesn't come from a

place of high and mighty impiety.

It just comes from a

place of being honest.

What I want to do,

what am I good at doing?

What provides value to

the rest of the world?

And that can change throughout time.

In fact,

if it doesn't change, I'd be

surprised.

We're put on this planet and throughout

different stages of our life, we're doing

different things and we're growing and

we're evolving and what you're good at

today won't be the same as

what you're good at tomorrow.

That's expected.

I'm a big believer in this idea that

you are infinitely smarter

than the younger version of yourself that

made the plans that

you're following today.

So why are you following those plans?

If your thesis or your new data sets

different, that suggests otherwise.

Fuck your plans, as they say.

Be better than that.

Do better than that.

Give yourself permission to

adapt and change and flex.

Don't grit and bear it.

Even though if you're listening and

watching me right now, you might think

that's what I'm doing right now.

I'm not.

Rather say, what's my thesis?

What am I trying to do?

Has it changed?

And if it has, adapt, pivot, switch.

It's not being topsy turvy.

It's not being a flip flop.

It's being real to yourself.

We're meat skeletons, as our

good friend John would say.

Cruising on this rocket

ship or this piece of rock.

Got all these brains and chemical.

They've got this chemicals in our heads.

And some of us have a more

consistent set of chemicals.

Some of us don't, but it's

all feeding us information.

And emotions are lies, but data is true.

And after you navigate all those waters,

what are you left with?

But

some version of the truth

that makes sense to you.

Clowns that say you should

grind and it's worth the financial

reward.

If you successfully do

it, they can fuck off.

Every single one of them.

Should be kind to yourself.

You should do what you want to do for no

other reason than you love

doing what you love doing.

Fight the good fight for injustice in

whatever way you can in

your small little pocket.

To get real corny for a second.

Phantom 2040, this character, Kit.

Walker Jr.

Junior Jr.

Whatever he's the next in line.

He resists wanting to be the

Phantom for a really long time.

He doesn't fully embrace

until the end of episode five.

After he's been kind of the Phantom every

episode for a little bit, doing odds and

ends here and there.

And he dons the mantle of Phantom after

he surrounds himself around

people who believe in him.

Each episode, I think he finds a new ally

or friend who joins his kind

of inner fight in his cave.

And then also finds purpose.

Like there's an actual injustice

happening and he feels so impassioned.

He has to do something about it.

And as as a corny television show, I'm

surprised at how much

truth there is in that.

Surround yourself by people who love you.

Who believe in you and

believe in your fight.

While all that's happening, find

something that you want to fight for.

Whether it's making art.

Whether it's being an advocate for

people, whether it's speaking to people's

hearts, whether it's.

Writing, making music, doing film.

Being there for your family and friends,

being a father or a

mother to your children.

Whatever that is, find that.

And fight that.

That's where you'll find who you are.

And that's

when you'll find that in those moments

when you're real tired.

You're like, man, I just

need like one day to sleep in.

I just need like a rest day.

And maybe you do.

I'm not telling you not to do it, but in

those moments, you'll also realize, yeah,

but I could also get one one more shot in

right now against that

thing I'm trying to fight.

And it'll be worth it.

And then I can recharge after and get

ready for the next one.

Because I might not be awake tomorrow.

Not to be doom and gloom,

but nothing is a guarantee.

The sun might not come up tomorrow.

Right now, though, that's what I'm in.

I'm in this moment right now of reality,

and I can get this

one thing in right now.

So what?

I'm a little sleepy.

So what?

I'm tired.

I've got people that love me and I've got

a mission in front of

me that I want to fight.

Let's go.

Put the gloves on.

Let's do it.

That's what I think about when I think

about today's episode.

And that's

your counter hit moment.

All right, folks.

That's been our episode today at the

counter hit a little

different than before.

Having had our cool usual polish.

Sorry for the lack of

audio and music all around.

Things are going to be a little bit

different next time, I promise you.

So if you enjoyed this

episode, let us know.

Otherwise, stick around till next week

when we switch things up quite a bit.

I'm your host, Sam Kirk.

This has been the counter hit.

Counter hit is a show presented to you by

zero dot media owned by

Sam Kirk and Daniel Pratly.

Until next time.

Enjoy the time you waste

knowing that it was never wasted.

Fight back in the way that

makes sense to you non violently.

And be good to yourself.

Cheers.